


Library Respect

by Guede



Series: Theory [8]
Category: Hornblower (TV), King Arthur (2004)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Bickering, Brotherly Bonding, Dating, Derogatory Language, F/M, Getting to Know Each Other, Humor, Internalized Homophobia, Internalized Misogyny, M/M, Multi, Office Sex, Road Trips, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:20:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28328151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: Gawain needs a book. The book is missing. And thus launches a Quest.
Relationships: Arthur Castus/Guinevere/Lancelot, Galahad (King Arthur 2004)/Mariette (Hornblower), Gawain/Tristan (King Arthur 2004)
Series: Theory [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2058675
Kudos: 3





	1. The Lost Book

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted to LiveJournal in 2005.

“Galahad!”

The couch exploded, spewing up papers, books, socks—Gawain hastily took several steps back—and one fuzzy-haired man. “It wasn’t me!”

“I know it wasn’t you.” Gawain leaned against the kitchenette counter and waited for Galahad to roll onto his feet before going on. He grinned at the other man’s scowl, then stooped to pick up the bookbag that he’d thrown at Galahad and that Galahad had knocked off the couch. “It’s both of us. Come on. Today we’re scheduled to get into the manuscript vault, so get a move on. You know how Dagonet is about that room.”

“Yeah, it’s harder to get him to give up the key than it is to get into a nun’s—ow!” Galahad was knocked off of his feet. He sat down hard and glowered up at Gawain through a fringe of frizzy curls, a puppy baring milk teeth.

Then he slung a book at Gawain a hell of a lot harder than Gawain had thrown Galahad’s bookbag. The little bastard was lucky that Gawain caught it before it hit the sink, which was filled with dishes soaking in soapy water. “Fuck, watch it. The last time I returned a book, Dagonet found a new dent in the cover and I thought he was going to ki—oh, good, this one’s almost due anyway.”

“Maybe I’m still using it,” Galahad muttered. He awkwardly got onto his feet and flapped at himself, gradually getting his clothes and hair into shape. There was a pencil stuck through the hair at the back of his head, and paper wads falling out of his rolled-up sweatpants, so Gawain guessed he’d actually been doing work. For once.

Well, maybe that wasn’t fair. It looked like Galahad’s last blow-up with Avalon’s female population had taught him a lesson that stuck, or maybe he was finally getting past that part of growing up. But at any rate, he’d been dating a little less and paying more attention to his studies.

Galahad looked at Gawain, then sighed. “Okay, I’m not. I’ve got most of that damned thing memorized, so if Mariette goes off on a snobby scolding, I can get her on the footnotes.”

“The footnotes,” Gawain repeated. God, they were such children. Even Tristan was starting to roll his eyes at it, and it took a lot to make him bored instead of amused.

“Yeah, you wouldn’t _believe_ how much it gets on her nerves. It’s great.” A yawn overtook the last of Galahad’s words as he stumbled towards the door.

With a sigh, Gawain yanked Galahad back and pulled his hair into shape. While Galahad was busy cursing him for that, he whipped off Galahad’s shirt, which smelled faintly of potato chips, and whipped onto the man the cleanest one he could find in the room. It’d be pointless to look in Galahad’s drawers since he kept anything in there _but_ clothing.

“We need to do the laundry. Like, today.” Gawain cleverly fended off Galahad’s punch by slamming Galahad’s bookbag at the man.

Grumbling, Galahad shouldered his bag and stomped off after Gawain. “Neatnik.”

“I’m not neat. I’m sanitary, for fuck’s sake. We let it go any longer and we’ll be declared a hazmat zone.”

“Don’t you get state money if that happens?”

Ow. It was way, way too early in the day for Gawain to already be getting a headache. Plus they were out of aspirin, thanks to Galahad’s hangover last weekend. “Don’t even think about it. Anyway, it’d have to go to getting Mariette’s car fixed. When the hell are you and Bed going to finish with that? It’s getting so bad that I’m hiding from her, and she likes me.”

“God knows why, considering the company you keep,” Galahad muttered. He shot Gawain a comically meaningful look that only added to the hilarity.

Ah, railings were the saving grace of drunkards and men stuck with idiotic roommates. Though this one was splintery and banged-up like the rest of their shit-fucked building, Gawain was grateful to have something to hang onto while he laughed himself sick.

Galahad got it after a moment. His face went red like he’d gotten sunburned on the water and he pissily stamped down the stairs. “I meant _Tristan_. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

It really was too obvious for Gawain to say anything. So he just let Galahad speak for himself. Man had a rare talent for it, after all.

* * *

Usually Dagonet dressed in the kind of nondescript clothes that an office drone on Casual Day might wear, but today must have been special. One, he was wearing a shirt that wasn’t a shade of brown. Two, his tie was off, his shirt-collar unbuttoned and his sleeves were rolled up so everyone and anyone could see he had a neck and shoulders like an ox. Galahad normally didn’t feel a shortfall in his testosterone levels, but looking at Dagonet was…was something beyond intimidating. It was like being a raptor from _Jurassic Park_ and kicking ass all day, and then suddenly meeting up with T-rex and finding out that there were levels of ass-kicking, and furthermore, that some of them just weren’t reachable by everybody.

It didn’t really help that Dagonet looked like he was just waiting for Merlin to send a message allowing librarians to pit-roast misbehaving library patrons. The way he was staring down his nose at Galahad and Gawain would’ve looked snobbish on anybody else, but on him it just said, ‘Carnivorous and bigger than you.’ “I need your IDs and your permission slip.”

“Right here,” Gawain cheerfully said. He pushed his ID and their slips across the counter, then looked at Galahad.

What—oh, right. Galahad fumbled in his bag, had a brief moment of panic and then found his wallet. He dug out his ID and passed it over picture-down.

Dagonet impassively took them and scooted over to his computer, where he began entering the evidence trail that’d let him crash into their apartment late at night and murder them without risking punishment. Gawain rolled his eyes. “That was not your worst picture. Your worst one was your passport.”

“Which you haven’t seen in two years on purpose.” As soon as he was given his ID back, Galahad got himself away from the counter. He let Gawain get the keys to the vault and the little booklet of Do Not Or We’ll Bookpaste And Stamp You To Death rules.

“Something wrong, Galahad? You seem…I don’t know, amazingly and obviously paranoid?” In true innocent fool manner, Gawain sauntered towards the back of the g-brary where the door to the manuscript vault was. He swung the keys from his fingers like they were just going on any other research jaunt.

Galahad resisted the urge to hit him. If Dagonet came after them, he’d be needed back-up. “I might have returned a book late the other day. With a coffee ring on the cover. But it came right off! I just wiped it a little with a tissue and some water from the water fountain, and it looked fine!”

“And you’re still alive? Wow,” Gawain grinned. He held open the door for a fuming Galahad.

The manuscript vault wasn’t actually a real vault—more like a very specialized reading room. It was always slightly chilly and the lights were a strange pale yellow that made everything look twice as dull as it really was. There were two large tables in the middle of the room, and three of the walls were lined with smaller alcoves containing one desk and one chair, and which could be shut if absolute silence was needed. On the tables were boxes of files, which had to be requested ahead of time, a supply of disposable handling gloves for the really delicate papers, and more little pamphlets of the vault’s rules of usage.

For some reason, Gawain liked the place. Personally, Galahad couldn’t wait for the university to computerize its library holdings. He always felt like he was walking into a funeral home.

Well, since he’d been dragged in here, he’d better get started. Sooner he got done, sooner he could go outside where it looked normal and not like the set for a horror movie.

He sat down with his box and his pair of gloves and started to plow through it. Mostly he was looking up personal letters—damn, they had a lot of spare time in the old days—in hopes that what he thought some dead economic philosophers had meant was really what they’d meant, and not the wishy-washy shit that they’d actually published. His project’s ultimate focus was more on current economic philosophy, but he had to get the obligatory history out of the way in order to satisfy the conservative hardasses in the faculty.

The letters were yellowed and fragile, and the ink was faded so Galahad had to hold it up to the light. But whenever he did that, the words written on the back showed through and so it was damn near impossible to read. It didn’t help that everybody seemed to write with the idea that generations later, some grad student would be cursing their stupid fancy curlicues.

In spite of all that, Galahad got a good page and a half of notes down in the first half-hour. That was about as long as he could go without a break, unless he wanted to fall asleep. Which was a stupid thing to do when in Dagonet’s bad graces _and_ in his territory.

Galahad scooted back and got up. He went over to Gawain, who was mumbling under his breath as he puzzled out the words on the essay he was reading. “Hey, I’m going to piss.”

“Yeah, you do that—oh, wait. I just remembered I need this one book. Here, the number’s written down for you.” Gawain thrust out a scrap of paper without even looking at Galahad.

For a second, Galahad stared at it. Then he heaved a breath and took it. God, Gawain was such a dedicated tight-ass sometimes. Pretty fucking obvious who was under who in that deal. Though given how much time Gawain spent getting rats for Tristan’s hawk, Tristan was pretty good at the topping-from-bottom deal, and _fuck_. Galahad had been spending too much time listening to pervy women. To hell with figuring out their secret kinks and pretending to be the sensitive guy. He didn’t need out of the doghouse that badly anymore.

He was almost back to the vault when he remembered about Gawain’s book and had to do an about-face. Whereupon he almost ran into Fulcinia. “Whoops! Sorry.”

She blinked like a doe from beneath her wispy bangs. For a librarian and a married woman, she actually still had her share of looks.

“What happened?” Dagonet said, materializing out of nowhere.

Galahad barely avoided plastering himself to the bookshelves. As it was, he swallowed hard and pulled out his please-give-me-bus-money cute face. “Oh, nothing. I was…uh…Gawain wanted this book.”

He waved the scrap as a shield. Somehow Dagonet divined the code number written on it; he nodded towards another row of shelves. “Over there, third shelf, around the middle.”

“Uh. Thanks.” Never, ever show the back to a potential danger was a lesson L. A.’s streets had taught Galahad well, so he shuffled backwards till he was out of lunging range. Then he walked as quickly as he could without sacrificing his dignity.

Thankfully, the section of books was one that Dagonet and Fulcinia had gotten reorganized so Galahad didn’t have to go crazy trying to figure out the old librarian’s secret organizational system. He ran his fingers along the spine labels. “Fifty-three bee cee…fifty-three eff gee…fifty-three jay kay twenty-one…no. No fifty-three jay kay twenty-one. Huh. Must be checked out.”

“No, it’s not.”

Mariette looked surprised to see Galahad jump a fucking mile. Airheaded bitch. “What do you mean, no? It’s not here on the shelf.”

“I looked it up on the catalog before I came for it, and I checked with Dagonet. It hasn’t been checked out in eight years,” she said. As usual, she had a shield of textbooks clutched against her front. “I put a hold on it. So when it does show up, I have it first.” Nasty smile. “You can have it _when I get my car back_.”

Galahad made a face at her. “For fuck’s sake, I told you it was a piece of crap. You’ll get it this weekend, all right?”

She made a face right back at him. “I want that in writing. You told me so twice already.”

“Galahad…Galahad? Oh, there you are. How long does it take to get a fucking—oh, hi, Mariette. How’s it going?” Gawain smiled at her, then rounded on Galahad. “You’re wasting our goddamn time.”

“Well, the book’s not here! Nothing I can do about that. See?” A wave of the hand, and Gawain’s attention was successfully redirected to the jump in the labels. He seriously needed to relax; he was always down on Galahad before he even had all the information.

Surprisingly enough, Mariette came to Galahad’s support. Then again, maybe not—she was such an uptight cunt about factuality. “It should be there. I checked the catalog and with Fulcinia.”

“Maybe it got misplaced.” Gawain began scanning the shelves. After a couple seconds, he glanced over his shoulder. “Uh…I could use some help.”

Mariette looked sideways at Galahad. “You work on his other side.”

“Christ. Why don’t we give each other cootie-shots while we’re at it, huh?” Galahad grumbled as he bent down. It was one of the smaller shelves, so with three it wouldn’t take long. Only reason he was putting up with her.

* * *

Forty-five minutes later, the trio had turned into a quintet as Dagonet and Fulcinia had gotten drawn into the discussion. Search though they might, no one could find the missing book. Fulcinia had even made a quick call to the u-brary circulation desk and to the stacks where the returned books were kept prior to reshelving, but she’d found no sign of it.

Dagonet had his arms folded over his chest and was staring fixedly at the spot where the book should be. He was…okay, Gawain could sort of understand why Galahad was so antsy around the man. He was definitely intimidating.

“It’s very odd,” Fulcinia said in her whispery, timid voice. “It’s not about anything that might give it a reason for disappearing…”

Galahad coughed theatrically to cover up his snark. Badly. “Ninja philosophy students.”

“Knock that off,” Gawain muttered. He looked at the spot, then on a whim he pulled out the books that were there and poked about the bare shelf. Maybe he’d been hoping that it had just gotten shoved behind, or something.

There hadn’t been a clear idea in his head when he’d done it, and there wasn’t really a clear idea when he saw the sticky spot on the wood. But hell, they might as well try anything. “Hey, Galahad. Gimme a paperclip.”

“What are you doing?” Mariette asked, pushing closer.

“I’m just…it’s a really stupid idea, but…”

…but twenty minutes later, he and Galahad and Mariette were walking into the forensic science labs, having promised a menacing Dagonet and a quietly distraught Fulcinia that they’d be kept up-to-date on any discoveries. Galahad came because he was doing anything to avoid doing his studies, and because beneath his defensive attitude, he was still pretty much a curious little kid. Mariette came because she wanted to complain about her car—at least, that was what Gawain theorized after listening to her for a couple minutes. Normally he liked her, but fuck, she really could get on people’s nerves when she got started.

“Let’s see. I think he usually works in this one…” Gawain knocked on the door, then pushed it in, He eased his head around the door, since the last time he’d just walked in, some students had been playing football with a hunk of liver and it’d nearly hit him in the face.

No, no one in the lab. Tristan was definitely doing research today, so if he wasn’t here, then he was probably in the gross anatomy room, which was shared with the pre-meds. Well…he might have sneaked over to the other set of labs, which technically was reserved for the professional—i. e. the non-teaching stuff—work. Only professors and labbies from the various law enforcement agencies were supposed to be allowed in there, but it was Tristan. Sometimes Gawain wondered if his boyfriend remembered how to unlock a door with a key.

“Wait. Are we going to the morgue?” Galahad started to slow down. He sped up again when Mariette gave him a scornful look. “I’m just asking, you know. Want to be prepared for any weirdness.”

“Just don’t embarrass me, okay?” Honestly, it wasn’t like Galahad hadn’t seen dead people before. And, Gawain thought in a fit of grimness, once they got to the dissection room, the corpses were a hell of a lot neater.

He paused with his hand on the door and shoved those memories back down. His shoulders seized up a bit, causing Galahad to shoot a questioning glance at him, but Gawain flapped him off. Galahad got it.

Mariette didn’t, and looked like she wanted to pester them with questions, but she was smart enough to hold her tongue even if she didn’t hide that very well. Gawain gave himself another shake and walked inside.

It was chilly and it smelled…stale, but stale in a way that assaulted the nose. Chemicals and faint rot and cold, which did have a smell to anyone who’d been poor enough.

There were a couple long lumps covered in tarps, plus one half-dissected corpse lying on a glossy metal table. Its face and hands were still wrapped up in cotton, but its abdomen had been sliced all the way open, and so had the part of the thigh that was facing them. And the figure bent over it was currently probing at the…

…Galahad winced. “Jesus, remind me never to donate my body to science. His _balls_ , for God’s sake.”

“They’re oversized, so if he were in a position to care, he’d have nothing to be ashamed of,” Tristan dryly replied, straightening up. His hair had been pulled back and clipped out of the way, which was why Gawain hadn’t immediately recognized him. 

He looked different with his bangs out of the way. Younger. More awkward, somehow—his face was put together in a way that Gawain liked a hell of a lot, but even Gawain couldn’t deny that it was unusually angular. It probably would’ve looked normal in the middle of a pack of Vikings, but paired with the bright green gloves and the rubber apron, it just looked…okay, this was so not the place. But he was cute. And there were dead bodies in the room, and Gawain had not just thought about shoving Tristan against a gurney and biting at those cheekbones. “Hey. Sorry to bug you—we can come back if—”

Tristan was already tidying up the body, stitching off something and then squirting preservative over the cavity. “No, now is fine. I was about to get lunch anyway.”

“You can eat?” Mariette croaked. When Gawain looked at her, she had turned kind of green. Though she was doing a pretty good job of not getting sick before Galahad, who was looking a bit wobbly himself, did.

The slightest bit of mischief slipped through Tristan’s eyes as he made his way over. He stripped off and tossed his gloves on the way, and by the time he’d gotten to Gawain, he’d also hung up the apron. So when he leaned over and pecked Gawain casually on the mouth, he technically wasn’t wearing anything that could’ve gotten corpse-juice on it.

“Ewww,” Mariette and Galahad chorused.

“Christ, wash up first,” Galahad added. Then he hastily backed off. “Not that I’m saying now I wanna see that shit whatever you do.”

Gawain smacked him on the head and shoved him towards the door. It helped cover up that Gawain himself was a little bit thrown; either Mariette had made the transition from being colleague and occasional pest to being some kind of friend, or Tristan was suddenly feeling like making more public gestures. Usually he was very hands-off unless it was Galahad, Arthur or Arthur’s…whatever the hell Lancelot and Guinevere were. Gawain wasn’t sure he knew a reasonably polite name for them.

Well, it’d get sorted out later, whenever Tristan felt like talking about it. “So, we’ve got this missing book and this old stain where it was supposed to be,” Gawain said, falling in behind Tristan.

* * *

“So you promise I’ll have it back,” Mariette was whining.

Christ. From the fire to the frying pan—or as Grandma Yvie would’ve put it, from the crack-line to the jail-line. All Galahad had wanted to do was to get out of waiting around in the lab while Gawain and Tristan had eye-sex, and now he had a goddamn tag-along. “Yeah. Yeah, you will, okay? Now will you shut the fuck up?”

Blessed silence while they walked towards Arthur’s house, but only for a couple yards while Mariette got over her shock. She lifted up her chin and did her best impression of disapproving nun. “I cannot believe you just said that to me.”

“Well, you’re a bitch.” Galahad damn well jumped the front steps to get away from her. He almost lost his balance, but luckily he managed to grab the door-knocker and righted himself. Then he gave the door a couple of sharp raps.

Mariette hurried after him, but she was hampered by her heels so she’d only just made it to behind his shoulder when the door swung in. Then it stopped, as if someone had caught it with their foot.

Galahad and Mariette stared at it.

After a moment, the door closed. Then it re-opened to show…Guinevere. She was breathing pretty hard and her hair was down in a tangled mess, which Galahad had never seen before. Admittedly, this was the first time in a while that he’d really gotten a good look at her, and the first time at all that he’d gotten one while he hadn’t had to worry about something like weird paramilitary guys running around trying to kill his advisor. Her blouse was half-yanked from her shirt and buttoned unevenly so he could see a flash of peach bra. She was one damn fine piece of work.

He came back to himself and hastily plastered on his polite face. “Hi. I, uh, called Arthur and he…?”

“Oh. Right. He mentioned…” Guinevere recollected herself and started gathering her hair into a tail behind her head; her blouse stretched and gaped between the buttons so Galahad suddenly had to find something interesting about his shoes. She glanced over her shoulder while rolling it tight, then stepped back to let the door open wider so they could come inside. “He’s…he’s just about done with lunch.”

“Right. It’s just a quick question—I guess we’ll wait here for him, if you don’t mind…” Galahad eased over to the side and gestured for Mariette to come over as well.

“I’ll let him know,” Guinevere airily said. She pivoted in a way that probably was meant to make men break their necks staring at her ass and walked off, bundling up her hair into a bun that she skewered with chopsticky-things.

Mariette let out a funny little cough. “You did _not_ just give Arthur’s girlfriend a…a look-over.”

“What the hell are you talking—” One look at the smirk on Mariette’s face told Galahad that lying wasn’t going to work. Onwards to plan B: brazening it out. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Of course I did. She’s sexy, I’m a guy, and if I hadn’t at least given her a little bit of a look, she would’ve gotten pissed off. Or she’d think I’m gay.”

“She would not—not to either of those. Women aren’t like that.” When Mariette wanted to look condemning, she did a hilarious wrinkle with her nose that just made Galahad want to flip the tip.

Muffled speech came from the kitchen, then stopped abruptly so Galahad glanced around the corner. Arthur didn’t come, so he bothered answering Mariette. “Bullshit. They are, too. I mean, look at you. You’ve got lipstick on, your—your shoes match your nail polish, you’re not dressed in a sack. Don’t tell me you did all that just because you wanted to.”

“Maybe I did,” she shot back. “Maybe looking good on the outside translates to looking good on the inside, too. It’s a self-esteem booster.”

“What book did you get that from? Come on, I’ve seen what girls do to themselves in the morning. It’s worse than the fucking Spanish Inquisition, and they do it of their own free will. That’s not self-help. That’s fucking masochism.” Galahad made illustrative motions with his hands, just in case his slang was getting too thick for her prissy head or anything. God knew he didn’t want to have to repeat this talk like he had to every other conversation he had with her. “The…the _waxing_. Jesus Christ. And then all those hair-irons in weird shapes so you can get any kind of scalp burn-scar you want, and the sleeping in hair-rollers…hey. Hey, are you choking?”

Well, no. Probably not. As Galahad had gone on, Mariette’s face had done the weirdest contortions until she’d finally covered her face in her hands and doubled over. And now she was sort of backed into the corner, supporting herself by leaning her hip against the wall while her shoulders shook like Jell-O.

“Galahad. Sorry to keep you waiting—and Mariette,” Arthur said, surprised. He slowed his approach.

He looked…a little too neat. He was an order-and-precision kind of guy anyway, but this just screamed overkill. And the missing shirt-button was kind of a clue.

“Oh, Arthur. Je suis déso—ce n’est pas toi—” Mariette stammered, whipping herself straight so fast her hair almost lashed a painting off the wall.

“She’s looking for the book too,” Galahad interrupted. He dug out the scrap of paper Gawain had given him and passed it over. “This one. Dagonet’s got no clue, but Tristan thought maybe you might have an idea since you knew the old librarian better.”

The other man read the paper at a glance, then stood thinking. “Well, I wouldn’t say that I really knew Mr. Fisher. More like I managed to have longer conversations with him than anyone else…if Dagonet can’t find the book, then it’s probably not in the library. He’s figured out more of Fisher’s old cataloging system than anyone else.”

“Well, where else would it be? I need this book for the paper I’m trying to write, and I can’t find a copy anywhere else. I checked all the online shared catalogs.” Mariette did something with her eyes that made them five times bigger and winsomely pathetic.

Arthur looked up at her, was briefly startled at her face, and then resumed thinking without any appreciable change. Galahad’s respect for him promptly shot up.

“Actually…” Arthur took a second look at the paper “…it’s interesting that it’s this book. Vivienne Argante was the Monmouth Professor before me; she’s retired now and living somewhere in Newark, I believe. You’d have a time finding this book anywhere else; it was being published by the department, only she stopped them after only a handful of copies had been printed.”

“Why?” For some reason, Mariette glared at Galahad. He ignored her—it _was_ the obvious question, and anyway, it wasn’t like Arthur seemed annoyed about it.

On the contrary, Arthur was happily digging deeper and deeper into his memory from the looks of things. “I don’t know. She left…very soon after, under unusual circumstances. I was curious and did a little querying myself on the subject, but I’m convinced that no one really has an idea why.”

Then he hesitated in the same way that he did while wavering over how to mark a grade.

“Merlin most likely has the best notion as to why, since all departing faculty are required to have an interview with him,” Arthur finally added, tone guarded. He gazed at Galahad and Mariette in a way that warned Galahad off more effectively than a pack of policemen with riot-clubs. It was just something he did with his eyes. “Not that I’d suggest bringing up the topic with the dean. I might know a professor at UCLA who’s got a copy. I’ll give him a call and let you know.”

“Thank you very much,” Mariette said. She went on to elaborate on her thanks so effusively that Galahad’s ‘thanks’ was almost drowned out.

Faint headache lines appeared between Arthur’s eyebrows and around his mouth, but he was the epitome of diplomacy as he somehow scooted them out the door and onto the steps. Not that Galahad could blame him.

“Damn.” Mariette gave the door an irritated look. “I was hoping I could get him to say more.”

“By annoying him? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you can’t annoy Arthur. Either he’s Mr. Gentleman or he’s about to kill you. Not really a middle ground.” Oh, shit. Galahad didn’t know if Mariette knew about Arthur’s little…background-check issues. He hastily got an excuse dressed up in case she asked.

She didn’t. Instead, she just sniffed like he was a stupid piece of shit far, far beneath the notice of her pretty little feet and stalked off. “Shows how well you know him. Tristan used to…to…I don’t know what he did, but he could-- _stare_ Arthur into doing things. I think that might be the best way to describe it.”

“Yeah, well, Tristan’s a mutant,” Galahad muttered. And now they were going to have to go back to the goddamn lab, and probably walk in on those two. Galahad’s escape idea had turned out to be a dead-end, so—

\--on the other hand, maybe not. He grabbed Mariette’s elbow, ducked when she nervously swung her purse at his head, and glowered at her. “Okay, I don’t like you, remember? And anyway, I was thinking we might be able to get your car today if you don’t mind helping me drag Bed out of…um. Well, out of bed.”

“Why?” she suspiciously asked.

“Because I don’t have a car and if we take yours, we could go to Newark. Kitty’s up in Canada again, isn’t she?” Galahad oozed charm till it started to hurt. After all the time he’d put into screwing up and then bugging Gawain for help with Mariette’s car, he thought he deserved to drive it for a bit. Plus he wouldn’t mind a vacation, even if it had to be to fucking New Jersey. NYC was too damned crowded for a good, long, mind-clearing cruise down the road.

Mariette eyed him, probably wondering what the catch was. But her need to be a good little scholar won out and she reluctantly nodded. “All right. But—”

“Great. Let’s go. We can get him before he goes girl-fishing if we go now,” Galahad said, bundling her down the sidewalk.

* * *

The lights on the panel flickered. Gawain shot straight in his seat. “Is it done?”

“No.” Tristan got some papers off the counter and rolled them up, then whacked the instrument box. The lights steadied. After five seconds, they were still steady, so Tristan signaled all was well with a slight nod of the head and leaned back in his seat. “That just means our department is cheap.”

“Everybody says that,” Gawain muttered, disappointed. He thought of himself as a pretty patient guy, but God, this was more of a drag than pulling old academic journals. It’d been exciting for all of ten minutes at the beginning while Tristan had taken Gawain’s sample and done chemical-stuff to it, but after it’d gone in the thingy that would tell them what it was, everything had gone downhill.

Even though he’d turned around, Tristan seemed to know what Gawain was thinking. He shrugged as he scribbled in a ragged, stained lab notebook. “There’s an old saying soldiers use as a job description—hurry up and wait.”

“And you’re the soldiers of progress, so the carry-over makes sense.” Wondering how scorch marks had gotten on the ceiling kept Gawain preoccupied for another minute, but soon he couldn’t help himself. He took his feet off the desk and began to slowly spin himself in his chair.

It was something Galahad would do and so Gawain was heartily embarrassed of himself, but at the same time he just couldn’t stop. The spinning was addictive.

Something stopped him: Tristan’s foot on the edge of his chair seat. “What are you doing?”

“Having a neurotic fit? Maybe my advisor’s rubbing off on me.” And Tristan’s hair was still tied back, and Gawain was really having a hard time not doing anything about it. Especially when Tristan leaned forward like that so his nose and cheekbones and cheek-tats were _right there_.

God, Gawain was pathetic.

He had a feeling Tristan thought he was going crazy. Maybe it was the worry in Tristan’s eyes. “Did Galahad do anything?”

“No.” The weird way Gawain said that wasn’t because he was lying, because he wasn’t. He was just…staring at Tristan’s stubble. It was sexy. And he was deranged, because he was _not_ getting hard when there was a goddamned bucket labeled ‘Maggot samples’ sitting on the counter in front of him.

It was empty, thank God. Gawain thought Iseult was beautiful and didn’t mind feeding the other hawks and falcons dead rats, but insects brought up too many shitty childhood memories. And they were just gross.

“Are you sure?” Tristan tipped his chair from four legs to two, expression deadly serious. A strand of his hair worked loose and drifted over his face.

Okay, pouncing hurt _owfuck_ , and note to Gawain the next time he decided to jump his boyfriend in a room with a linoleum floor. But he had his tongue in Tristan’s surprised mouth and it was hot and messy and good, and his hands were either in Tristan’s hair yanking it loose or petting the tats, and that was good, too. He briefly got up to toss aside…hairpins. Couldn’t help snickering before he dove back at Tristan’s mouth.

Tristan banged his knees against Gawain and pushed like he wanted out from under, but then Gawain stroked his tongue over the roof of Tristan’s mouth and Tristan moaned. His hands went from shoving at Gawain’s shoulders to bunching up Gawain’s shirt.

Then Tristan stiffened, got his head away from Gawain who didn’t mind because _neck_ , and with a faint tanline around it that was begging to be licked. “Wait—lab—sterile environment—”

“That it? Thought you were gonna ask me to stop,” Gawain mumbled around Tristan’s collarbone. He pressed the flat of his tongue against the hollow at the base of Tristan’s neck and felt the other man arch lewdly against him.

“I wanted you to land towards the office. No, left. _Left_.” Which Tristan pointed out by sticking his hand down Gawain’s jeans and tugging Gawain’s cock the right way. That kind of treatment, Gawain’s prick really, really fucking appreciated.

They sort of squirmed. It was maybe five feet and technically they could’ve just jumped up, run in and kicked the door shut, but Gawain was busy. With Tristan’s nipples, and the sensitive ticklish strip beneath Tristan’s ribs, and with the dark patch of hair that fuzzed out of the crotch of Tristan’s jeans once Gawain had gotten them unzipped. And yeah, with the hair that once loose, seemed always to be in Tristan’s face. Gawain accidentally chewed a lot of it as he did his best to treat all of Tristan’s face to his mouth. “Gotta update your profile in my head. Cocktease.”

“No, just patient. I was beginning to think I’d have to first…” Tristan trailed off into a moan as they finally humped their way across the threshold. He splayed his legs and writhed against Gawain, his thigh rubbing frantically across Gawain’s cock. “They only mop those floors once a month.”

“Fuck, don’t tell me that.” Fortunately for Tristan, Gawain’s body never heard and so the movement of Gawain’s hand on Tristan’s cock didn’t slow. He flipped his ponytail out of the way so Tristan could explore further with—Christ, it felt like Tristan was tongue-fucking his ear.

Breathless laugh. And then Tristan was just this liquid wildness beneath Gawain, sliding around till Gawain had his head between Tristan’s knees and was sucking the sweat off of Tristan’s cock. He worked Tristan’s ball-sac in time with his swallowing and wormed his other hand—well, just the finger, really—back beneath the denim till he could rub his knuckle against the puckered skin, feel it almost slip inside before Tristan was bucking and going nuts.

Gawain grinned as he wiped his mouth, then crawled up the other man to gently bite at Tristan’s lower lip. “You know, sometimes I get why Galahad gets this incredibly disgusted look around you. Funny thing, though. I kind of don’t care.”

“Sometimes I get why he thinks you could do better.” There was a flash of soberness beneath Tristan’s light teasing tone. But then he lifted his legs and twisted them over, and he was nuzzling down Gawain’s front before Gawain could really worry. “Good thing I don’t usually find him worth listening to.”

And then his mouth. His mouth was a furnace. His mouth was a vortex of perfect pressure and wetness and heat. Fuck it, his mouth was God. Yeah. God. _God_.

A little while later, Gawain roused himself from a sticky, boneless happiness that was just impossibly deep and good and brilliant. “Tristan?”

“Mmm?”

“So what does the beeping mean?”

Tristan made an annoyed growl and slowly peeled himself off of Gawain’s legs. “It means we’ve got results.”

He hitched up his jeans and did up his fly, but left his shirt alone, then walked out. Gawain took a little longer since he felt a need to make sure there weren’t any really obvious signs—and in a forensic teaching lab of all places, his guilt-voice wailed—before he found out what was going on with that book.

“I’ll go over the room later,” Tristan told him. The other man was frowning at a computer that was hooked up to the instrument. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m going to anyway, but I’ll try not to obsess over it. So what do we have?” Peeking over Tristan’s shoulder meant Gawain got to smell sex in Tristan’s hair. Which he liked to do, even if it was silly.

Tristan actually paused. “Melted butterscotch candy.”

It was Gawain’s turn to pause. “Butterscotch?”

“Old.” Shrug. “I’d have to run a longer test to figure out how old. If it’s not random, then it might be a useful clue—Mr. Fisher loved butterscotch buttons. He was always snacking on a bag of them. It annoyed everyone because he wouldn’t even let you bring water into the libraries, but he’d eat them right in front of you.”

“So…he pulled the book himself, and didn’t log the change anywhere? Weird.” Gawain leaned back and tapped his fingers on the counter, trying to remember everything about earlier. “The stain did look pretty old. It—it had to have been there before Dagonet rearranged the section, because none of the books there had butterscotch on their bottoms. So it’d already dried up.”

Tristan’s hands flew over the keyboard, apparently shutting down the program. It was getting near dinnertime…and Galahad and Mariette should have been back way, way before now. Though there had been a stretch where Gawain wouldn’t have noticed an atomic bomb going off, so maybe they had come back and had left again.

“Do we have to track down Galahad?” Tristan asked.

Gawain needed a second to be in awe of Tristan’s mind-reading powers. Then he shrugged and glared at Galahad, wherever the hell the fluffy-headed bastard had gotten off to. “I can call Bed, see if maybe Mariette bugged him into going to finish up her car. There was only a little bit left, and I don’t think even Galahad could fuck it up.”

“If not, we can check with Arthur to see what he told them.” A lock of hair fluttered over Tristan’s nose as he spoke.

Okay, once in the lab was…fine. Twice was no good. And frankly, Gawain was beginning to think they needed to get out of the building before he really did end up jumping Tristan somewhere truly scarring.

“Not in the morgue,” Tristan said, bending over the computer again. “One of my classmates caught Galahad necking with a girl in there. So we’re not.”

“He _what_? Oh, that little—God, I’m going to…to…” Forcibly tie Tristan’s hair back, was the thought that sprang out first. Only that would probably end in sex.

A tiny sliver of a grin stole across Tristan’s face. “Give me another moment.”

“I’ll…just get our bookbags,” Gawain said. Yeah, that was safe. It’d keep his hands full of non-Tristan things. It’d…he jammed his hands in his pockets and walked off, cursing himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LJ users evil_jacquie and trin_chardin contributed regarding the morgue/forensic labs layout.


	2. Overdue Fine

When they reached Arthur’s house, Tristan led Gawain around the back and began to pick at the ivy on the side of the house. It took a second for Gawain to realize the other man was testing its strength.

“Um. It’s kind of late. Wouldn’t we freak him out coming in like that?” he asked, hastily gobbling the last of his sandwich. They’d just breezed through a shop on the way over for dinner, figuring they could fill up more after they’d figured out where the hell Galahad had gone.

Tristan jumped, which was supposed to be a once-a-year type of event. Then he ducked his head and casually walked around to the back-door. “Probably. It’s…old reflex.” When he saw that Gawain still didn’t understand, he twitched his fingers in a way that said to check out the house more carefully. “The lights aren’t on.”

“Oh.” Okay. Gawain could understand that a little; back in his old neighborhood, there’d been paranoid old dealers that nobody came at straight on because they’d more likely than not get shot out of hand. Best bet was to sidle in sideways and wave and smile a lot. “Well, doorbell…”

He was just about to ring when the lights came on, and it wasn’t just Tristan who instinctively flattened down. Luckily, Gawain’s hands came down on the grass instead of the gravel walk, which would’ve hurt like a bitch.

Crouched down next to him, Tristan paused and cocked his head. Then he nodded and stood up, getting out a ring of keys. “It’s Arthur and Lancelot.”

“And…I think one of them’s drunk,” Gawain muttered, listening himself. He wasn’t sure they should interrupt the slurred singing going on inside, but Tristan was opening the door before Gawain could say so. Standing out on the back porch might save some dignity one way, but it looked really stupid the other way.

In the end, Gawain hesitantly followed Tristan into the house. They were in the dining room that flowed off the kitchen, and at the other end of the room Arthur was awkwardly drag-heaving another body. He’d already seen them and stopped by the wall so he could prop Lancelot against it, but apparently Lancelot wasn’t having that. “Office party,” Arthur explained. He looked like he wanted to apologize for every crime against humanity committed in the last decade. “Successful case closure. Guinevere’s—”

“—on a different one, and having hell with the alibis. She’s uptown poking at ‘em.” Lancelot slouched from the wall into one of the high bar-style chairs at the island in the kitchen. He slumped into it, then spun it around so he could lean his head on the back of Arthur’s shoulder. His tie was gone and his shirt flapped open at the collar and sleeves, which made it very obvious where he was trying to grope Arthur. “Evenin’, Tristan. Tell me Arthur doesn’t have to go out. Because I really, really want to—”

Get Arthur’s hand over his mouth. Arthur nudged Lancelot further behind him so only the mussed top of Lancelot’s hair was showing, then turned to Tristan and Gawain. The desperate glint in his eyes had almost worn through his pathological politeness. “Are you here for the same reason Galahad and Mariette stopped by?”

“I think so. They went off without leaving us any message, so we wondered if you’d told them to go anywhere.” Tristan carefully avoided establishing line-of-sight with Lancelot as he leaned against the table. From the way the corners of his mouth were quirking, he probably did that so he wouldn’t break down into helpless laughter.

He was lucky that that was all he had to do. Lancelot clearly hadn’t given up, and was now making ridiculous little purring noises and…and rubbing his face along Arthur’s back, Gawain guessed. How Arthur was managing to ignore it with no more than the occasional uneasy shift of weight was beyond Gawain’s comprehension.

Arthur hunched his shoulders, apparently in an attempt to get Lancelot off of him, and shook his head. “I didn’t tell, or know, any more than you do about Vivienne Argante.”

Tristan’s fingers flattened on the table and his brows drew together, which was his more usual way of signaling surprise. Then he looked inquiringly over at Gawain, who was in the middle of kicking himself for being an idiot.

“Right. Sorry, the book was one of Argante’s. I meant to mention it to you, but Galahad was being an ass and…” Yeah, it was amazing, but somehow Gawain had _not_ told Tristan exactly what they were looking for. It made Gawain pause when he realized how little Tristan had had to go on, and how he still hadn’t hesitated about running Gawain’s sample.

There wasn’t any kind of recrimination in Tristan’s expression. Instead, he seemed to be thinking hard, as if trying to drag up a memory.

“I did mention she now lives in Newark…” Arthur slowly said. He had the same air of intense thoughtfulness as Tristan, and for a moment the air tingled weirdly, feeling like the Twilight Zone theme sounded.

Then Gawain’s sense of impending doom took over. “Oh, God, no. That idiot.”

“Newark? You think he’d go?” Tristan asked.

“It’d explain why Bed said that Mariette had picked up her car. God, that…” Gawain turned around and stalked towards the door, wishing that Grandma Yvie had given Galahad a couple more whacks on the ass. The jackass could’ve used some more built-in reality checks. “Crap. We should call her up and warn her.”

Arthur shook his head. Considering he knew Galahad, he seemed pretty calm about the whole thing. Then again, Mariette had to be going with Galahad if they were taking her car, so Arthur might have been counting on her to straighten things out.

Come to think of it, it was weird that she’d even agreed. She was outspoken, no doubt about that, but when it came down to it, she tended to be shy about actually doing things.

“I don’t think Vivienne has a phone line. You can find her address online, but I haven’t been able to find a number for her.” The way Arthur added inflections to his words told Gawain to take them seriously, because obviously Arthur knew what he was doing when it came to digging up information. And given the kind of resources beyond the norm that he could get into, he had credibility. “By all accounts, she was a force to be reckoned with in her day and she didn’t slow down much. I wouldn’t worry. But Gawain? When Galahad and Mariette do return, please tell them that I’d like to talk with both of them about their…impetuosity.”

“Will do.” And damned if Gawain was going to help Galahad out of this time. If the idiot was going to run off to New Jersey to bother some poor old woman, he deserved whatever he got.

The floor creaked suddenly as Tristan moved. “Was this the book that she resigned over?”

Before he answered, Arthur took his time studying Tristan’s blank expression. He took a deep breath and crossed his arms over his chest, wariness faintly touching his face. “Tristan, please don’t break into Merlin’s office.”

“I wasn’t planning to.” It looked and sounded like Tristan was telling the truth, so he probably was. Funnily enough, that didn’t seem to reassure Gawain or Arthur. “Thanks, Arthur. I…think we’ll go now.”

His eyes flicked to Arthur’s neck, where something pink had just flickered. After staring at the other man for a second, Gawain spotted it again: Lancelot’s tongue. Lancelot’s fingers were creeping around the sides of Arthur’s arms.

“Lancelot,” Arthur hissed, turning around. Bad move, since he promptly got himself sloppily pounced.

It was a good time to leave. Gawain got Tristan by the elbow and pulled him towards the door, while behind them Arthur struggled with an enthusiastically tipsy Lancelot. Good luck to him, Gawain thought.

“I think—” Tristan started to murmur.

“Do you always molest your boyfriends in front of other people?” Arthur snapped, and so loudly so that Gawain jerked to a stop.

But when he looked back, neither of the two men was paying any attention to him or Tristan. Arthur had Lancelot under the arms, sort of how somebody would hold up a baby, and was glowering at Lancelot with a mixture of irritation and affection that was a lot rawer and…genuine than he ever showed at work. He was always sincere about everything, but right now he looked like Lancelot meant enough for him to…well, he _had_ forgotten about the rest of the world.

For his part, Lancelot seemed to be trying to put his weight on his own feet, but it wasn’t working out well and he kept falling back against Arthur. “You’re not my bloody boyfriend,” he retorted with commendable diction. “You’re the bloody arse I fell in love with.”

A little sound was strangled and killed in Tristan’s throat. He quietly and quickly opened the door. Good idea; this was interesting, but somehow not something that should get shared around in public.

Not that Gawain—trained by Grandma Yvie’s soaps—could look away yet. He watched as Lancelot blinked, collapsed a little further and plaintively stared up at Arthur. “I’m completely smashed, aren’t I?”

“You’ve been worse,” Arthur said, voice so low and gentle that Gawain could barely make out the words. He wormed out an arm so he could cup Lancelot’s face; oddly enough, Lancelot seemed embarrassed and kept trying to duck his head away. But Arthur wasn’t having any of that, and…and he had good reflexes. He deflected Lancelot’s face up towards his mouth, and after a moment, Lancelot got his arm up around Arthur’s neck, and…

…Tristan and Gawain were on the steps, and Tristan was looking at Gawain with an amused expression as he silently locked the door. “When you’re done watching them make out, I’ve got an idea about looking up why Argante quit over that book.”

“Not breaking into Merlin’s office,” Gawain quickly said.

“No, not that. Breaking into the Attic,” Tristan calmly replied, as if that was much better.

* * *

The map made this nice tent that kept Galahad from having to look at Mariette while she gasped and muttered and generally was the most annoying passenger-seat driver he’d ever had to suffer. But as long as she was trying to trace roads, he couldn’t really hear her over the rustling of the paper and all was good.

Newark. Not really. More like, Newark-as-the-closest-landmark. They’d left any traces of the city behind nearly fifteen minutes ago and were now putting around the New Jersey backwoods, searching for the address that Galahad had found on the ‘Net. “There’s a road coming up.”

“What’s its name?” A couple tendrils of brown hair briefly flopped over the edge of the map.

“There’s…no road sign. Fuck this for a stroll in the park.” Galahad’s first reaction was to turn down it anyway and just drive fast till he hit a clue, but something stopped him. God knew what—it wasn’t his pride, because that was saying show no weakness in front of the annoying French girl with the long memory.

Maybe it was that commonsense-thing that Gawain was always going on about. At any rate, it was pointing out to Galahad that if he was currently bitching about being lost in fucking New Jersey, then maybe he should try to keep from getting more lost. Because obviously the more lost one was in a place like New Jersey, then…okay, he’d lost his grip on deductive reasoning. Time to pull over onto the shoulder.

“What—what are you doing? Where are we?” Mariette jerked down the map and stared with wide, slightly panicky eyes at the dark landscape around them. Granted, they were walking right into an urban-legend set-up, but…

…well, urban _legend_. Was or wasn’t she a philosophy major? “I’m trying to find out where we are. Give me that.”

Instead of being sensible and doing so, she got the map folded and put away in five seconds flat. “No.”

Galahad just stared at her. Then he took a deep breath and held out his hand. “Mariette, let me see the map.”

“Why? Drive.” She actually waved her hand at him, like he was some retriever puppy, or something brainless like that. “Drive!”

“I’m not driving till I know where the hell we are, where the hell we’re going, and how the hell we’re getting back!” Galahad exploded. He threw up his hands and promptly smacked them on the walls, which scraped one knuckle. Swearing, he slumped back in his seat to take a look at it.

There was a little bit of blood, but it looked shallow enough to scab over quickly so he just licked it. Then he looked up to catch the weirdest look on Mariette’s face. “What?”

“Ew.” She shook herself back to her usual mulishness and hugged the map more tightly. Her eyes were constantly darting about, and every time a tree branch rattled or some crazy bird flew by, she jumped in her seat. A couple of times and she’d more or less knocked her bun loose.

Hair down looked better on her. It added shadows and softer curves to the lines of her face, which taken by themselves were pretty severe. Actually, when her hair had been up, her face had looked distinctly skull-like in the dim light.

“Oh, get over yourself. Now look, we’ve got a half-tank of gas. Either we find this woman’s house in the next five miles or we have to turn around. It’s nearly midnight and I don’t want to spend all night in New Jersey, so what’s it going to be?” He didn’t mention that if she didn’t give him an answer in a minute, he was going to turn off the engine to save on the battery; he and Bed and Gawain hadn’t quite managed to fix that part of the car. It ran okay as long as it didn’t get stressed too badly, and he didn’t want to take chances out here. Creepier than Kansas.

Mariette looked at him, looked at the map, looked outside and shivered. Then she reluctantly passed over the map. Though she still didn’t leave him alone as he unfolded it, but instead scooted till their hips were almost touching. She must really have a phobia of the dark for that.

“I think…we are here. This one—” her nail sliced down a short hair of a road marked on the map “—is the last road sign we passed, three roads back if you count from the right and four if you count from the left.”

“Okay, see? This is cooperation.” If they were where she said they were, then they actually were almost there. The problem was just figuring out where the hell the last road was, and the kicker was that Galahad was beginning to think it wasn’t on the map. He kind of regretted not getting directions online, but they’d been using the u-brary’s computers and those damn things were slower than an old lady with a walker crossing a freeway.

It slowly penetrated Galahad’s consciousness that Mariette was annoyed at him. She did it all the time so she had to get more annoyed in order for him to bother noticing.

Her nose was wrinkled again—stupid habit. Somebody had probably told her it was cute back when she was knee-high and she’d never realized it looked idiotic on an adult. “Why do you think I’m a bitch?”

“What? Aren’t you trying to act like one to me?” Galahad lowered the map and shoved his face into her space. Maybe if he made her uncomfortable enough, she’d go back to sulking in the corner.

Unfortunately, it looked like she was in a mood to fight. She shoved her face forwards to meet him and they actually bumped noses, which wasn’t exactly pleasant for either of them, but the first one to back down would’ve…well, lost. So they sort of sat there, glaring at each other.

“Don’t you deserve it?” she said.

“Aren’t you supposed to be better than my level?” he retorted.

The air sang. The temperature rose and the world shrank till Galahad could _hear_ the sweat-drops popping out of his skin and slicking down the side of his face. He suddenly had the feeling that he was going to do something really, really stupid.

Fuck knew what happened, but suddenly Mariette was all over him and crawling to get even more on him. She got her hand stuck in his hair and bashed her knee against the stick-shrift. When she cursed, she did it in French and she ended up biting the hell out of his lip because she wouldn’t stop kissing him at the same time. For some reason, he was kissing her back.

Okay, well, for the reasons of her breasts being damn nice and her waist feeling damn good in his hands. Actually, to hell with reason. That was the point of doing something like this.

“Putain…non—no, this—” Mariette went at his throat with a vengeance as she grabbed his hand, which he thought she’d wanted on her breast. Uh, no. Lower—whoa.

The little Gawain-voice in Galahad’s head finally screamed for his attention. It didn’t get it, but it did startle him enough to look up and casually look out through the window.

Galahad screamed.

* * *

“You remember that the last time we did this, Dagonet caught us. Right? And this time, we don’t really have Arthur to fall back on…” Gawain tiptoed after Tristan, who was leading them through the top floor of the Attic. Up here they mostly kept administrative archives for Avalon, so the surroundings were huge filing cabinets instead of shelves or storage lockers. Personally, Gawain found that creepier. “And he’s all worked up about the book, too.”

“Arthur?” Tristan finally stopped them before a particularly large cabinet. It was made of heavy wood with glass panes so when Gawain shone the flashlight at it, they could see the labels of the files inside. Unlike the other cabinets, this one was relatively free of dust and seemed to be used pretty often, judging by how the brass had tarnished in the shape of fingers on the handle.

Gawain made a face at Tristan. “Don’t be flippant. You know what I mean.”

“If someone wasn’t flippant, then this would be hilariously serious work for finding out about one book.” As always, it was impossible to tell what, exactly, that Tristan was mocking. But Gawain puzzled anyway, and while he was doing that, Tristan was efficiently picking the lock. “Merlin keeps duplicate files on all the faculty members in this cabinet. Argante’s should be here somewhere, and in there should be why she left.”

Which explained why Tristan looked like he spent a lot of time in this area. Somewhere around here must be files on Arthur, and Tristan did spend a good deal of his time altering any paper records of his and Arthur’s presence.

Gawain wondered if Merlin had ever noticed his reports were being altered. Or…no, Tristan was more careful than that. He probably wasn’t going to make any changes till whenever he and Arthur moved on. “Hey…what are you doing after you finish your masters?”

“What?” Tristan glanced up from the files directly into the flashlight. He flinched away, then hunched over and rubbed at his eyes.

“Shit! Crap, I’m so sorry about that. I didn’t mean to—shit. Are you okay?” The first reaction Gawain had to was to turn off the flashlight, but that just plunged them into complete darkness. He immediately turned it back on. “Sorry…God, I have no idea what I’m doing.”

A smile flickered over Tristan’s face as he turned back to the file. “I’m fine. Are you still thrown by Lancelot and Arthur?”

It was a life-saver and Gawain gratefully took it, since by now he’d had the time to realize what he had asked and he wasn’t really sure if he wanted to have that talk yet. After all, he was still just gearing up for research in order to write his thesis, and after all the trouble he’d had getting to Avalon in the first place, he didn’t want to think beyond it. He would have to, eventually, but right now that felt like leaving just when he’d finally gotten settled in.

He tilted the flashlight so both Tristan and he could read, though he was more grinning at Tristan than reading. “Yeah, well, I’ve never seen Lancelot like that. I mean, I… _think_ I interrupted the first time he was trying to get Arthur in bed, but usually if I see him he’s dressed sharper than a razor and arguing with somebody.”

Tristan snorted and kept running his fingers down the files. He paused at one, but it was a false alarm. “That was him being a well-behaved drunk. Usually he’s worse.”

“Well, you’re pretty funny when you’re drunk,” Gawain’s mouth said. Gawain’s brain froze dead in its tracks from sheer horror. Then it leaped into action. “I mean, you’re pretty fun. No, I meant…oh, fuck.”

The muscle in Tristan’s cheek twitched, and his eyes had stopped moving so he wasn’t paying attention to the files.

“Shit. There’s no good way to back out of this, is there? I’m just…God, why do you put up with me?” And Gawain proved his point by absently lifting his hands to tug at his ponytail and accidentally blinding Tristan again. “Shit! Sorry! Sorry! Sor—”

Tristan held him in place for a good minute before easing away for breath. His hands stayed on Gawain’s face. “Did you want to see me drunk more often?”

He sounded…playful. A great wave of relief crashed into Gawain’s knees and sent him reeling against the cabinet. “Oh…well, actually no,” he said in a faint voice. “It was fun, but it was also…you’re a little scary when you’re sloshed. So nah, that’s okay.”

“If you’re sure.” Still amused as hell, Tristan went back to the files. His finger stopped on one, which he took out and opened.

Clipped to the top were a couple photos, one a very old black-and-white one of a very beautiful young woman. The photo that looked the most recent was recognizably of the same woman, though she hadn’t really aged well. Her eyes, however, hadn’t seemed to change at all and stared boldly out of all the photos.

“Vivienne Argante…” Tristan flipped quite a few papers over “…here. The transcript for the dismissal interview.”

They read it in silence, Gawain resting his chin on Tristan’s shoulder. Occasionally Tristan would reach up to adjust the angle of the flashlight, but otherwise neither of them moved. They forgot about that; the interview was too engrossing. Several times Gawain caught himself on the verge of exclaiming in disbelief, and even Tristan rolled his shoulder a few times, signaling his incredulity.

When they finally finished, Gawain drew a long breath. “Damn. Talk about dirt in the ivory tower.”

“She was bitter,” Tristan agreed. He started to say something else, but paused as a thought occurred to him. When he finally finished speaking, he did so slowly and carefully. “Arthur must have suspected. But Merlin was involved, so he wouldn’t have pushed.”

“He respects the Dean that much?”

Tristan shook his head. He closed the file and delicately slid it back into its place. “No, he respects his old advisor.” Quick glance at Gawain, who was in mild shock. “You didn’t know?”

“I do now. Man, they aren’t kidding when they say that academia’s inbred…so that explains why the book would be pulled from the shelves. Though it wasn’t really that necessary if nobody leaked the key to its encoded message, and it doesn’t seem like anybody did.” Gawain stepped backwards to give Tristan room to shut up the cabinet. Then he waited while Tristan did various inexplicable things that made it look like no one had touched the cabinet since…whoever’d done that before them.

“Back then more than one person probably had an idea about what Argante was about to do. I think Mr. Fisher must have pulled the books meaning to put them back after people had forgotten about her leaving, but he died before he could. That’s why they weren’t wiped from the catalog.” When he’d finished, Tristan gestured for Gawain to turn off the light. He started to walk out of the aisle, then stopped to cock his head. After a moment, he backpedaled and hastily drew Gawain into a parallel aisle.

“Is anyone in here? Tally?” called Fulcinia. She sounded like she was by the stairway.

Tristan stopped again, then turned them around and silently but quickly made for the windows. Gawain did his best to emulate the other man, particularly concentrating on making his breathing as shallow as possible because it sounded so loud to him. He kept an ear out for Fulcinia, who seemed to be walking away from them, thank God, and for whoever else that was apparently working in the Attic this late.

Once they were safely out the window and had gotten onto the ground via a strong ivy-trellis, Tristan explained. “Merlin’s assistant for the summer. He’s in a rush to wrap up things before he leaves for a year in Korea and sometimes he pulls files late at night.”

“Oh. And Fulcinia?” Because Jesus, she might look as fragile as a china doll, but her ability to sense people in the library gave her an intimidating aura.

Tristan shrugged. He started off across the grass, tucking his hands into his pockets. His eyes wandered over the sky, drifted to the shadowy sculptures looming from beside one building, and finally landed on Gawain. For some reason, he looked a little regretful. It might have been the dark messing with Gawain’s eyes. “But that didn’t get you your book.”

“No. I have no idea what we’ll say to Dagonet tomorrow, either. Maybe just that we had no luck and it’s lost for good? He’s not going to like that.” Oddly enough, Gawain felt pretty okay about it all. Earlier he had been a little freaked out—fine, maybe he’d overreacted—over hitting the first real snag in his research, but now he was…okay. He was just sorry he’d gotten everyone so excited over what was, in retrospect, a really little thing. There were other books he could use. “Hey. Thanks for helping out, even though it ended up being pointless.”

“You’re welcome,” Tristan replied.

He didn’t seem to have a plan on where he was going, and Gawain was just wandering, so they ended up moving in a loose semi-circle. When they had stopped, they found themselves before one of the school fountains. It was an old one, and earlier in the summer it had broken down and had had to be turned off, so its basin was dry.

Gawain put up his knee on the rim and stared at a long crack that ran along part of the wall. “No wonder Arthur’s so polite. Professors really are brutal to each other.”

“Not all of them, but enough are to worry about.” Tristan sat down on the fountain edge and stretched out his legs, then folded them neatly beneath himself. “So what are you going to do? That kind of knowledge could still do a lot of damage.”

“Well, are you going to tell anyone? Besides Arthur, I’m assuming.” After Tristan nodded, Gawain took down his leg and sat next to the other man. He pulled his knee up to his chest. “I don’t see what the point of talking about it would be. Fisher’s dead, but Argante and Merlin are still alive, and if they aren’t doing anything about it, then I don’t see why we should.”

A dark shadow floated over their heads—an owl. Something warm and soft touched Gawain’s shoulder, and then Tristan fully leaned his head against Gawain. “I was thinking about getting a job as a forensic investigator,” he said, so quietly that the words almost vanished into the night. “I have no idea where. Did you want to go anywhere?”

“I…” Gawain stopped and looked down at his hands. The whole crux of the affair that’d led to Argante’s resignation and Fisher’s embitterment—which he’d taken out on two generations of students with his esoteric cataloging system—had been a decision made too quickly. At least, that was how Gawain had read it.

In the end, he just put his arm around Tristan’s shoulders. “Ask me in another year.”

“All right.” Tristan didn’t seem disappointed—at least if he was, he wasn’t showing it by any signs of which Gawain knew. “Want to go back to my apartment, or yours?”

“Probably mine,” Gawain sighed. “I still need to scare the shit out of Galahad.”

* * *

Five years had just been scared off of Galahad’s life, and to no goddamn purpose as far as he could see.

Actually, all he could see was frame after frame of black-and-white photographs. They were pretty enough, but they cluttered every available surface and crowded the walls so he felt a little claustrophobic. The theme seemed to be water—oceans, coastlines, lakes, scummy ponds.

Mariette lowered her tea-cup to point at one. “I’ve been there. My parents used to take me there on vacation when I was little.”

“That one’s Los Angeles,” Galahad said, not to be out-done. He had a second to enjoy that, and then they both remembered what they’d been doing. She flushed and jerked away, and he didn’t complain because that meant he could stare into his tea and wonder what the _hell_ he’d been thinking.

Footsteps interrupted his thoughts; the door to the kitchen swung open and in walked the face that had gotten Galahad to scream like a virgin in front of Mariette. For an old lady, Vivienne Argante could still make a hell of an impression.

“I thought I had a few spare copies, but I can only find the one right now,” she was saying. She held out a small, thick book with a plain, worn covering that had been stenciled with the title and a drawing of a goblet.

“Thank you all the same.” Mariette nervously smiled and reached for the book.

Ms. Argante almost let her have it, but at the last moment she pulled away to flip it open to the back. There she tapped the page so both Mariette and Galahad could see. “The secret’s here, you understand. If you were being thorough and reading all the footnotes, you’d soon find out that I was revealing sordid secrets about the fine and upstanding Avalon College.”

Not that surprising to Galahad, who was used to finding tarnish beneath the new paint, but Mariette seemed to take it rough for a moment. Then she leaned forward, transparently intrigued.

“Of course it’s not much compared to today’s scandals, but it might still make a fuss.” Like old ladies everywhere, once Ms. Argante was determined to tell a story, it was clear she was going to _tell_ it.

It was a little annoying, but Galahad figured he might as well let her. They’d driven all the way out here and then they’d gotten scared like little babies when she’d pressed her face up against the glass, her white hair glowing in the moonlight—and he completely didn’t buy her excuse that she was out walking her dog; she’d obviously had practice freaking out poor lost drivers—so they deserved a little bit of explanation.

He leaned against the wall while Ms. Argante and Mariette both took a seat, the old woman on the sofa across the way and Mariette on the chair nearest to Galahad. Which he was ignoring, incidentally.

“Bran Fisher was a brilliant man in his own way, and I think I loved him a little, but he could hold a grudge like nobody’s business. Then again, so could I.” When Ms. Argante laughed, her hands shook so her tea splashed over her cup-rim and onto her saucer. “You have to understand that back when I started, a woman in the academic world was worse off than a worm on a hook. Either you let yourself be eaten or you ate first…or at least, that seemed to be the only two choices available to me. I took every possible advantage I was offered.”

“It became a habit after a while—I mean by that plagiarizing, stealing ideas from my graduate students. Eventually I basically forgot why it was wrong to do so. Then I started seeing Bran Fisher. He used to say he could have been a professor emeritus if he’d wanted to, but that he hated the internal politics necessary. So he became a librarian instead. But he still kept up his research, and one day he came to me and told me I’d made a mistake in my last paper—I hadn’t properly credited an obscure source. Of course it had been deliberate on my part. It had been so long since I’d thought about the morality of the issue that I panicked and tried to talk him into not telling anyone.”

“He just stared at me, and I could see the revulsion taking over him. He went to Merlin, who’d just become the Dean at Avalon. Merlin called me in and gave me till the end of the term to set my affairs in order.”

“At the time I was just finishing this book. It was supposed to be the culmination of all my years of study, but…I was angry, and I went straight from Merlin’s office to my computer to alter the manuscript.”

“Being a librarian’s something like being a spymaster—eventually you get to learn about all the skeletons in people’s closets. Bran had told me a little bit of something filthy about every faculty member at Avalon, save for…I think Kitty Cobham, Merlin, and some of the hard scientists. Taken together and hidden in the footnotes of my book, it would have been enough to send Avalon into a permanent decline. Once it’d been printed, I planned to have an anonymous letter published that would explain how to read the footnotes.”

“What changed your mind?” Galahad didn’t know why they were both staring at him. He was just as surprised as they were to find himself asking the question.

Ms. Argante recovered first, sipping at her tea before she answered. “Bran. He…showed up on my doorstep in the middle of the night, and handed me a small box, telling me it was what he’d lost. When I opened it, I found a beautiful engagement ring.” She smiled very slightly at the floor. “I suddenly lost my appetite for revenge. I took up a position teaching writing at a small community college near here—the pay’s so low it’s essentially charity work, but it keeps me well enough.”

Mariette set aside her tea-cup and reached for the book. This time, Ms. Argante let her have it. “Is this also…” Mariette hesitantly asked.

“Oh. Oh, no, that is all original work. I…on some level I always knew it was wrong. I told myself it was a challenge to see if I could do it the straight way, but…” The other woman sipped her tea again. Suddenly the spark in her face seemed to dim. “I waited far, far too long to change.”

It was awkward after that. Galahad muttered something like a thanks and a farewell, but Ms. Argante seemed to be lost in thought. She sat with her head bent over her tea, nodding to herself. The last he saw of her as he walked out of the house was the white top of her hair, faded and coarse.

“Well,” Galahad said. He slid into the car, waited for Mariette to get in and then started the engine.

She looked at him, but too quickly for him to read his expression.

He pulled out onto the road, and once they’d rediscovered the highway, he tried again. “Can I see that for a moment?”

Mariette wordlessly handed it to him. The cover was soft with age beneath his fingertips, but when he sniffed at it, he could smell a faint hint of ink, as if it’d just come off the presses. “You know…I could take this for Gawain. But here, you can have it back.”

Damned woman wouldn’t take it, but instead stared at him like he’d just grown another head. “Why?”

“Because you came along with me.” If she had any sense, she’d take it before Galahad came to his senses. “You’ve got balls.”

“I’m not sleeping with you.” She blurted the words like she was throwing up a shield.

Galahad rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

It was a quiet drive for the rest of the way. But she took the damned book.

* * *

Tristan probably had been pulling all-nighters in the lab again, judging by how fast he fell asleep on Gawain. They were bundled together on the couch, and had been planning to watch some weird French flick about werewolves in the 1700s, but after Tristan had dozed off, Gawain ended up just flipping channels. He’d landed on an Iron Chef episode when Galahad finally staggered in. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Wha?” The eyes Galahad turned on Gawain were more bleary than L. A. smog.

“Never mind,” Gawain sighed. When Galahad was in that condition, there wasn’t a point in yelling at him. It’d have to wait till morning—well, till Galahad got enough sleep to be capable of walking in a straight line would be more accurate.

Galahad shrugged and stumbled for the sink, but before he’d gotten halfway there, somebody knocked. He staggered back and opened the door to reveal…Mariette. Mariette with big eyes and a book that she almost flung at Galahad. “I’m not sleeping with you!”

“Uh…no, you’re not. We’ve gone over this,” Galahad said, clearly puzzled. He squinted at the book, then jerked to attention. However, Mariette had already clattered down the stairs, and so Galahad could only stare into the hall. After a moment, he shook himself and started to close the door. “Jesus Chr—”

Somebody—Mariette stopped him and stuck her head past the door. Even in the dark, her blush was visible. “Do you want coffee?”

“Um.” Galahad was completely floored. “Uh. Now? Can I sleep first?”

“Come by at noon, and you can get lunch, too,” Gawain called.

She didn’t take her huge, huge eyes off of Galahad, who eventually nodded. He might have been doing that just because he was so tired, but Mariette didn’t seem to notice, or care. She eeped and skittered off again.

When it was clear she was gone for good, Galahad shut the door. Then he turned around, paused, and then leaned against the door. “What the fuck did you say that for?”

“What’s the book?” Gawain countered.

“Oh. _The Grail_ , Vivienne Argante.” Galahad woke up enough to smirk a little. “You fucking owe me…oh, man. Laundry. Can I borrow a shirt from you…I don’t know if I’ve got a…a…”

Yawning, he stumbled towards the bedroom. Tomorrow morning was going to be funny as hell, but for the moment, Gawain felt like being nice. He slid out from under Tristan and followed to get Galahad tucked into bed.

“Thanks, mom,” Galahad sarcastically, tiredly muttered.

“You’re welcome, idiot.” Gawain smoothed the cover over him, then wandered back out to Tristan.

* * *

Nobody ever explained to Dagonet and Fulcinia how _The Grail_ reappeared on the shelves. It is widely believed, however, that they somehow found out anyway. Gawain, Galahad, Tristan and Mariette weren’t charged overdue fines for the entire year.


End file.
